Gucci has named Sabato De Sarno, a detailed affiliate of Valentino designer Pierpaolo Piccioli, its new artistic director. He’ll current his first assortment for Gucci at Milan Style Week in September, the model mentioned in an announcement launched Saturday morning.
Rome-based De Sarno joined Valentino in 2009 after holding positions at Prada and Dolce & Gabbana. Since rising to the position of Valentino’s trend director, overseeing its males’s and girls’s ready-to-wear collections, De Sarno has grow to be a fixture on the model’s occasions around the globe, however stays unknown to the fashion-consuming public.
De Sarno has “huge and related expertise,” Gucci chief govt Marco Bizzarri mentioned in an announcement. “He’ll lead our artistic groups with a particular imaginative and prescient that may assist write this thrilling subsequent chapter, reinforcing the home’s trend authority whereas capitalising on its wealthy heritage.”
The transfer sees Gucci-owner Kering as soon as once more elevating a behind-the-scenes determine to guide its flagship model. De Sarno’s predecessor at Gucci, Alessandro Michele, who departed the model final November, was an unknown veteran of Gucci’s studio earlier than main its historic enlargement alongside chief govt Marci Bizzarri.
Kering has been below stress from traders to determine a successor to Michele, whose hit maximalist aesthetic helped the model almost triple annual gross sales to round €10 billion and quadruple income since 2015 earlier than progress slowed.
Gucci took a heavier hit than most throughout the pandemic and has continued to develop extra slowly than rival megabrands like LVMH’s Louis Vuitton and Dior. Gucci’s fourth-quarter gross sales are more likely to have fallen 14 p.c on an natural foundation, based on estimates from UBS, its momentum inadequate to beat industry-wide challenges together with extreme coronavirus disruptions in China.
The worth of Kering’s shares are presently down 17 p.c year-on-year, in contrast with an 8 p.c improve at LVMH and 9 p.c carry for Cartier-owner Richemont.
The model not too long ago promised traders to remain within the highlight with a full return to the style calendar — exhibiting its collections 6 instances a yr — making the artistic emptiness much more pressing to fill.
In recent times, Kering has honed a robust playbook for revamping its manufacturers by betting huge on the visions of disruptive designers, amplifying their creations with a unified, fashion-driven message throughout merchandise, retailer decor, promoting and social media content material. The strategy helped the group’s labels, together with Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga, to face out amid the luxurious sector’s ultra-classic branding, fuelling speedy progress and turning beforehand unknown artistic administrators like Michele, Daniel Lee and Demna into design stars.
However throughout luxurious’s post-pandemic progress spurt, many customers have gravitated to basic objects from blue-chip manufacturers on the expense of extra fashion-driven propositions, making the best way ahead for Gucci unclear: Whereas Michele’s eye-catching merchandise and kitschy styling nonetheless energy a €10 billion enterprise, lacklustre progress charges counsel customers are much less within the model’s aesthetic, regardless of it spending round €800 million on advertising and marketing final yr.
At an investor day final June, Kering mentioned it was working to retool Gucci’s model message, reinforcing the extra timeless components of the model’s backstory to enrich its fashion-driven provide. The push is supposed to stabilise an organization that has grown reliant on designer-driven reinventions to gasoline progress, and permit it to boost its costs with a view to rely much less on entry-level luxurious customers. Final yr, Gucci employed a brand new normal supervisor, Maria Cristina Lomanto, to retool the model’s merchandising and reinforce its high-end provide.
Nonetheless, a low-key, transitional menswear outing in Milan earlier this month confirmed simply how a lot Gucci has come to depend upon Michele’s idiosyncratic contact: the studio-designed assortment that the model introduced was wealthy in elegant tailoring and saleable sneakers and equipment, however struggled to undertaking a transparent message about what the model stands for.
Beneath De Sarno, who will oversee ladies’s, males’s, leather-based items, equipment and life-style collections, Gucci is more likely to maintain the deal with stabilising its model picture with a extra basic identification — whereas concurrently working to reinvigorate trend pleasure.
“Gucci stays one of the iconic, distinguished and influential luxurious homes on the earth,” Kering chairman François-Henri Pinault mentioned. “With Sabato De Sarno on the artistic helm, we’re assured that the home will proceed each to affect trend and tradition by means of extremely fascinating merchandise and collections, and to convey a singular and up to date perspective to trendy luxurious.”
As a first-time artistic director, De Sarno’s aesthetic universe is hardly a identified amount. The designer’s Instagram web page references artists together with Lucio Fontana, Jim Goldberg and John Giorno alongside images of his dachshund — providing only a few clues.
When it comes to product, the designer’s 13-year tenure at Valentino may help Gucci’s upmarket push — the home exhibits two high fashion collections per yr, and infrequently carries over high-end particulars to its ready-to-wear provide, together with ostrich feathers, crepe couture elaborations, sequins and brocade.